SPOILERS AHEAD
Keret's collection is a surrealist collection that uses black humor to dissect the mentality of war. He uses short, punchy sentences to keep the stories vibrant while highlighting the disturbing twists of the content. The stories are tied together with two main themes: religion and anger/rage.
Many of stories feature characters with a God-complex. The titular story is an excellent example ("The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God"), though this can also be found in "Hole in the Wall," "Kneller's Happy Campers," and most disturbing of them all, "Cocked and Locked" where the feeling of superiority is blanketed by the theme of rage as it depicts an Israeli soldier in a verbal (and later physical) altercation with a Palestinian man.
With current world events, "Cocked and Locked" is almost nauseating to read. However, Keret does depict the events as something no one really wants to happen. The Palestinian man shows his detest and anger-driven by Israeli occupation as the Israeli soldier shows equal contempt as someone who is forced into a military and faces harassment. Everyone is angry. Everyone is losing. Only some people have to lose more than others. Keret does pick apart Islam throughout the book, however, he also picks apart every religion.
This is most easy to see in "Kneller's Happy Campers" (the longest story of the collection, by far). There is a chapter in which two Israeli men who have killed themselves and are now on a quest in the afterlife come across an Arab (no details about nationality are given) man who admits to being a suicide bomber. The climax of the scene is when one of the Israeli men is mocking the Arab man about the belief in the "72 virgins waiting for him" to which the Arab man responds: "Sure, they promise [...] and look what it got me. [...] And you, what did they promise you?"
Keret's characters are vastly unlikable, some even admitting to being racist. His saving grace for the collection lies within the protagonists. The protagonists are typically characters that act as a proxy for the reader, someone who is on the outside (in one way or another) and are watching atrocities and horror occur around them. Again, the primary deviant from this is "Cocked and Loaded" where the protagonist is the Israeli soldier that ends up severely assaulting the Palestinian man. Though further research into both the occupied and occupier positions (pre-October 7th, 2023) would be helpful in understanding the climate and purpose behind this piece in particular.
